Ruminations on Astronaut Lisa Nowack.

In yesterday's New York Times article, there's a section addressing the question of how someone trained to deal with stress, and presumably screened for psychological fitness, could do this thing. According to the article, "Nick Kanas, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, who has studied astronaut psychology, said that the screening occurs only at the very beginning of the process and that once an astronaut has gotten through the front door, the formal psychological evaluations give way to evaluation of job performance. Psychological counseling is available but not mandatory, he said."

Which got me thinking that NASA must have really relaxed its standards since the 60's. Because as we all know, Dr. Bellows was constantly checking up on Captain Nelson, subjecting him to tests after every little mission, and always giving him the fisheye whenever Jeannie made some off-the-wall supernatural event occur in Cocoa Beach. Tony and Roger lived in fear of being tossed out of the program because of Jeannie's antics, but Nowack gets 30 days of leave for pepper spraying her romantic rival in an airport parking garage after driving 900 miles non-stop from Houston, packing a steel mallet, rubber tubing, gloves and garbage bags which she brought along in anticipation of a little girl-talk.

Hilarity ensues.